Thursday, June 14, 2007

"Shall I commend you in this?"

Sometimes I really struggle at work to maintain charity when it comes to matters of faith. The latest thing to cause me to have to bite my tongue involved one of my nurses discussing taking communion at her (evangelical) church. She said, "Sometimes if I am really hungry, I will take a bigger piece of bread from the loaf." What?! Then she went on to tell me that there were a couple of options for communion in their church. Those who wanted to take communion could take either grape juice or wine or flat bread or a regular French loaf. "It's whatever you feel you need to do." What?!

Ugh.

Has it really gotten this bad? Has receiving communion become (in this evangelical protestant church) akin to lunching at the Piccadilly? (I'll take the large fish with hushpuppies and tartar since I am really hungry.) And why must everything be about what pleases you? What about pleasing the Lord? Can people not sacrifice themselves even in something so simple as partaking of the Lord's Supper?

"When you meet together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another is drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not." - 1 Corinthians 11:20-22

If they want to partake in real Communion, then perhaps they should consider becoming a Catholic. I have always been bothered by the fact that they even call it Communion or go through the act of eating it when clearly the "items" they are eating are not consecrated and therefore not the body and blood of Christ. I grew up in a fundamentalist Baptist home hearing all my young life that Catholics worshiped Mary and other saints, and thought they were eating Christ's real flesh and blood. Even then I wondered why does this church mimic this "supper" if they say it is wrong. My mother married a Catholic man (which was a huge deal to my grandmother), and it was then that I started going to a church that was nothing at all like the den of sin I was lead to believe I would encounter upon entering the doors of a Catholic church. I feel there is some truth and genuine love of God found in Protestant churches, but I also like to pause and think of how blessed we Catholics are that we get that same truth and genuine love, plus we get to partake in the Holy Eucharist. How perfect is that? So, when I am faced with other family members who reject Catholicism, I love to tell them that Christ built the first (Catholic) church with St.Peter at its helm, and that is was "man" who deviated from God's plan and came up with all of the hundreds of Protestant faiths we know today. God is infallible and man is, well, man. I just thank God every day for showing me truth and bringing me to Mass again and again.Greta H.

Why criticize others? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. At least she attends the church of her choice. Is she in the wrong because she is not Catholic? God bless her (and anyone else) who takes communion in the name of the Lord.